When we mention the great French gardens, the imagination almost automatically conjures up the embroideries of Le Nôtre at Versailles. But who designed the landscape of contemporary France — that of the urban parks where people stroll on Sundays, the green spaces at the foot of large housing estates, the roads that weave into the countryside without disfiguring it?
One figure stands out:Jacques Sgard, born in 1929, a French landscape architect and urban planner, winner of the Grand Prix du Paysage in 1994. Much less publicised than today’s star gardeners, he is nonetheless considered one of the founding fathers of the landscape architecture profession as it is practiced today in France — and, by extension, as it influences us in Belgium.
Why talk about it from La Hulpe? Because his method —thinking about the structure of the soil before the decor— is exactly what we apply to every project, from the small Uccle garden to the large estate in Brabant Wallon.
From gardener to urban planner: a new vision
Jacques Sgard was born in 1929 in Pas-de-Calais and grew up in the countryside of Boulonnais,"close to the farming world"as he himself recounted. As a teenager, he travelled across France by bike, went camping, and hiked in the mountains. For him, the landscape is primarily a physical experience before being an academic subject.
At 18, he entered the Landscape and Garden Art Section of theNational School of Horticulture of Versailles, a very young section (created in 1945) that primarily trains in the design of squares and urban gardens. Finding this training too narrow, he continues at theInstitute of Urban Planning in Paris, where he has as professors the architect-planners Robert Auzelle and Jean Royer.
It is this dual perspective that will be his strength throughout his career: he knows plants, but he thinks on the scale of the urban planner.
The Dutch trigger (1954)
In 1954, as a young graduate, he goes for a six-month internship at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, in the Netherlands, with ProfessorJan Bijhouwer. The shock is total: while in France they are still talking about "reconstruction" and "green spaces", the Dutch are already thinking on the scale of the entire territory. He writes a thesis entitled"Recreation and Green Spaces in the Netherlands"and discovers the notion oflarge landscape— the one he will introduce in France and of which he will become one of the main propagators.
His subsequent travels to Finland, Sweden (where he meets the woman who will become his wife), Denmark, and Germany will sustainably nourish his practice. The garden city ofTapiola in Finland, the first European post-war new town project, will remain a major reference for him.
His philosophy: landscape as a public service
For Jacques Sgard, landscape has a fundamental social function. His thinking is organised around three simple but radical principles for his time:
1.The scale of the territory.He does not only design large areas: he thinks on the scale of the neighbourhood, the city, or even the entire region. Roads, buildings, open spaces, waterways — everything is included in a single design.
2.The ground as raw material.Sgard does not endure the terrain; he shapes it. Mounds to isolate from noise, depressions to collect water, undulations to create intimacy or open up perspectives: topography is the primary tool of composition.
3.The fluidity of use.His parks are designed for movement and appropriation. People circulate, play, and meet there. The pathways connect the neighbourhoods and weave links where urban planning had not anticipated.
The masterpiece: the André-Malraux park in Nanterre
If one project had to be highlighted, it would be theAndré-Malraux departmental park in Nanterre, at the gates of the La Défense business district. Sgard was appointed designer and project manager as early as 1967 by the EPAD (Public Establishment for the Development of La Défense). The work spanned more than a decade — starting in 1971, opening to the public in 1980 — for a park of25 hectaresthat asserts itself in the urban fabric.
The starting site is far from enchanting: a shantytown, wasteland, old quarries. Sgard makes it a manifesto of his method.
Three choices that make all the difference
• A park deliberately open to the city,not enclosed— the opposite of an enclosed garden. The park interacts with the cloud towers of Émile Aillaud to the south and the terraced buildings of Jacques Kalisz to the north.
• A radical soil modelling: threeartificial moundsare created from millions of cubic metres of earthworks from the nearby construction sites of La Défense. What was a nuisance becomes the relief of the park.
• Arustic plant palette, understated, maintained according to forestry techniques — in contrast to the standardised horticultural plantings of the time. For the collection garden, Sgard draws inspiration from the BrazilianRoberto Burle Marx.
The result is a park with a structure surprisingly close, all proportions considered, to Central Park in New York: a large central void that unites a built urban landscape all around.
And at the Parc Floral de Paris? A garden within a garden
It is sometimes said that Sgard designed theParc Floral de Parisin the Bois de Vincennes. This is incorrect: this park, created for the Third International Floralies in 1969, was designed by the landscape architectDaniel Collin.
What Sgard created there, in 1970, is more discreet but very significant: theSculpture Garden, a space designed around paving stones and sloping lawns that interact with the exhibited works. A small-scale demonstration of his way of sculpting the ground to highlight what is there.
From the large ensemble to the landscape plan: work at all scales
The uniqueness of Sgard is that he refused to choose between the garden and the territory. He worked with a rare coherence at all scales:
The outdoor spaces of the large ensembles
Where developers saw only remnants between two blocks of flats, Sgard designed real inhabited landscapes. This is the case in theoutdoor spaces of the new town of Quétigny-les-Dijon(from 1960 to 1990, in collaboration with the colourist Bernard Lassus for the treatment of the façades), or in theMaurelette district in the north of Marseille(1966-1967), where he plays with a row of plane trees and successive squares to preserve the Mediterranean identity of the place.
Regional landscape plans
A pioneer in France oflandscape planninginspired by the Dutch model, Sgard has carried out large landscape studies in the Vosges, in Lorraine, and in the Marseille metropolitan area — where his recommendations to preserve the wild character of the Calanques foreshadowed the creation, decades later, of the Calanques National Park.
Industrial wastelands and historic gardens
In the 1990s, he worked on therehabilitation of industrial wastelands(notably in Micheville, Lorraine) and on the restoration of historic gardens. At theChamarande park in Essonne(1991-2000), he chose to retain the classical layout while adding winding paths and vast contemporary lawns. He also worked in Beirut, on the Bois des Pins park (1994-1997).
A scene to understand: the land sculptor
Let us imagine a construction site from the 1970s, on the plain of Nanterre. The land is a patchwork of vacant lots and limestone fill. The earthmoving equipment is in action. Sgard is not there with a dibber: he has a leveling plan. He directs the bulldozers to shape the future mounds, checks that once at the bottom the walker will be cut off from the noise of the ring road, and that once at the top he will have an unobstructed view of La Défense. Even before the first planting, the park already exists — through the shape of the ground.
The entire Sgard method is here:the framework before the decor. A lesson that remains, sixty years later, incredibly relevant.
What we take away for our gardens in Walloon Brabant and Brussels
Sgard's thinking was developed for public parks, but it translates remarkably well to a private garden of 300 or 1,500 m². Here is what we keep in mind at La Hulpe when we design a project:
4.Think about circulation before planting.Before choosing your plants, draw the paths. How do you get from the gate to the house? From the terrace to the vegetable garden? The circulation lines structure a garden far more durably than the flower beds.
5.Work with the relief, even if slight.On flat land — common in our developments in the south of Brussels — a movement of soil of 40 or 60 cm can be enough to create a sense of space, to isolate a reading nook, to manage the rainfall that is increasing on our clayey Brabant soils.
6.Create 'rooms'.Sgard divided the space to multiply the atmospheres. A low hedge, a low wall, a row of grasses are enough to distinguish the dining area from the children's corner. A garden seen at a glance is always smaller than a garden that is discovered in sequences.
7.Plant structural trees.Not just decorative shrubs. A tall tree gives the garden a 'roof' and a human scale — this is what makes the difference between a lived-in garden and a decorative garden. For the gardens of Brabant Wallon, local species such as hornbeam, small-leaved lime, or sessile oak are remarkably well-suited.
8.Choose plant sobriety.The lesson from Nanterre: a limited, robust palette, maintained with techniques close to the forest, ages infinitely better than a profusion of horticultural species. Three to five well-chosen species will make a better garden than twenty poorly articulated ones.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jacques Sgard still alive?
Born in 1929, Jacques Sgard was still practising his profession at the end of the 2010s — he notably gave a lecture at the Maison de l’architecture PACA in September 2018. We have not found any recent public source confirming his death at the time of writing this article. If you have verified information, please feel free to write to us.
What is the difference between a landscape gardener and a landscape architect?
Agardenermaintains; alandscape gardenerplants and arranges according to a plan; alandscape architectdesigns the project as a whole — circulation, levels, plant structure, water management, interaction with the built environment — before the first plant is chosen. This is exactly the approach that Sgard has helped to establish in France, and it is the one we apply in Belgium under the protected title of garden architect and landscape architect recognised by the ABAJP-BALA.
Can we visit the André-Malraux park?
Yes, the André-Malraux departmental park is open to the public all year round, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). Access via the RER A, Nanterre-Préfecture station. It’s an exciting detour if you are passing through Paris and are interested in the art of contemporary gardens.
Conclusion: the legacy of a builder
Jacques Sgard did not just design parks: he hasredefined the role of the landscape architectin urban projects. The Grand Prix du Paysage awarded to him in 1994 recognises a career that has changed the profession.
What he leaves us, and what we try to convey to each client, can be summed up in one sentence: a garden is not an island disconnected from the world. It is a fragment of landscape, structured with rigor to be inhabited with freedom. Whether it is on 25 hectares in Nanterre or on 600 m² in Watermael-Boitsfort, the principle remains the same.
